"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name
under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.". . . Acts 4:12 . . .

Introduction to the Geneva BibleAlso Known as
The Pilgrim's Bible

Dr. William H. Noah and Dr.
David L. Brown
Copyright 2001 & 2005

The Books of the
1560 Geneva Bible

(with modern spelling)

Overview

Despite being virtually unknown today, the Geneva
Bible is most revolutionary of all English Bibles. It was
born out of persecution and takes its name from the initial city of
publication. When Mary I, also known as "Bloody Mary," took the throne in
1553, English Bibles were made illegal and heavy persecution broke-out
against Protestants and proponents of English Scripture. Hundreds fled
England and many of these exiles settled in Geneva, Switzerland, where
they produced a new English Biblethe Geneva Bible.

The Geneva Bible was the first English version to be
translated entirely from the original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Greek. Though the text is principally just a revision of William Tyndales
earlier work of 1534, Tyndale only translated the New Testament and the
Old Testament through 2 Chronicles before he was imprisoned. The English
refugees living in Geneva completed the translation of the Old Testament
from Hebrew to English for the first time. The work was led by William
Whittingham.

When the Geneva translation of the New Testament
appeared in 1557 and the entire Bible in 1560, it was innovative in both
text and format, and quickly became the household Bible of English
speaking people. It was the first English Bible to have modern verse
divisions as well as modern chapter divisions. It was the first Bible to
use italics to indicate words not in the original language and the first
Bible to change the values of ancient coins into English pound sterling
equivalents. It was also the first to use plain Roman type, which was more
readable than the old Gothic type, and it was in a handy quarto size for
easy use. With prologues before each book, extensive marginal notes, and a
brief concordance, the Geneva Bible was in fact the first English "study
Bible."

Between its first edition of 1560 and its last edition
in 1644, 160 editions, totaling around a half million Bibles, were
produced. And for the first time common people could not only understand
the words in the Bible, they could actually own one. Its widespread use
first solidified the English language among the common people, not the
1611 King James Bible as many assume. Actually, the King James Bible
required decades to surpass the popularity of the Geneva and supplant it
from the hearts of the English speaking world.

In fact, the Geneva Bible was the principal English
Bible initially brought to American soil, making it the Bible that shaped
early American life and impacted Colonial culture more than any other.

History of the English Bible

Through the Dark and early Middle Ages the English
Bible was not necessarily forbidden; it just did not exist. Though
portions of the Bible had been translated into English in earlier
centuries, it was a fourteenth century Oxford scholar, John Wyclif, who
arranged for, and likely assisted in the first complete English
translation of the Bible. No printing press existed, therefore these
Wyclif Bibles were handcopied, requiring months to reproduce just one
Bible. Unfortunately, because knowledge of the original biblical languages
of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek was scarce in England at the time, they had
to be translated from Latin.

Shortly after John Wyclifs death in 1384, the
reaction against these first English Bibles and followers
of Wyclif, called Lollards, became intense. The Lollards, like Wyclif,
were deemed heretics, and the handcopied English Bibles, as well as
Wyclifs writings, were declared heretical, confiscated, and destroyed. In
1401 King Henry IV enacted a statute called the "De Heretico Comburendo,"
which officially forbid English scripture and made "heresy" a secular
crimepunishable by being burned at the stake. Despite persecution, the
Lollards continued to teach and distribute English scripture. Pope Martin
V became so outraged at the persistence of Wyclifs followers that he
ordered Wyclifs bones to be dug up and burned forty-two years after
Wyclifs death.

In the century following Wyclifs death, two important
historical events occurred that further affected the spread of English
scripture. The first was the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453,
which dispersed Greek refugees and their Greek biblical texts across
Western Europe. This, along with the influence of Italian Humanism,
returned the knowledge of Greek language to Western Europe after being
absent for nearly one thousand years. The second occurred in Mainz,
Germany, between 1453 and 1455 when Johann Gutenberg developed a printing
press with movable type. Gutenbergs printing press, considered the
greatest invention of the last millenia, forever changed Western Culture
and initiated the mass production of Bibles.

Erasmus of Rotterdam, influenced by these two
historical events, published the first printed Greek New Testament in 1516
and then four other editions in 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535.

A courageous and brilliant German monk named Martin
Luther utilized Erasmuss second edition of 1519 to produce the first
printed German New Testament from the original Greek, in September of
1522. It was not Luthers "95 Theses" nailed to the castle church door in
Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, that secured the Reformation on
the continent but rather his German translation of the Bible, which put
scripture in the hands of the people.

While Luthers German translation of Erasmuss Greek
text forever changed the continent, William Tyndales first printed
English New Testament in 1526 forever changed the English world. In
Tyndales day English scripture was forbidden, so he published his New
Testament while in exile in Germany.

Tyndale also used Erasmuss Greek text (third edition)
to produce the first printed English New Testament. He later revised his
New Testament and it was printed in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1534. Despite
living as a hunted criminal, Tyndales work was exceptional and so
accurate that the later widespread Geneva and King James Bibles would
utilize more than 80 percent of his exact wording. In fact, much of the
vast influence attributed to the Geneva and King James Bibles should be
attributed to one manWilliam Tyndale.

In accomplishing his translation, Tyndale actually
created the modern English language still spoken today. Tyndale formed his
English from the active, verb-oriented Greek language and the Old (Saxon)
English used before the Norman invasion of 1066. The influence of the
French language from the Normans formed the Middle English of Wyclifs
time. Tyndale remodeled the Middle English and formed the English language
that is the most spoken language in the world today. The Geneva Bible,
followed by the King James Bible, began the worldwide dominance of
English, yet their words were mainly from one man.

Tyndale was also one of the first Englishmen to know
Hebrew (this was his eighth language), and certainly the first to ever
translate any part of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) into English.
Before he was imprisoned and subsequently martyred on October 6, 1536,
Tyndale translated the Old Testament from Hebrew through 2 Chronicles as
well as the book of Jonah. Like Wyclifs earlier work, Tyndales English
translations were illegal and thus confiscated and burned. His final words
before he was strangled and burned were a simple prayer: "Lord, open the
King of Englands eyes." Tyndales desire was that the Scriptures would be
loosed in the language of the common people.

While Tyndale was in prison, his close friend Miles
Coverdale published the first complete printed English Bible in Antwerp in
the fall of 1535. In 1537, just a few months after Tyndales martyrdom,
Coverdales second edition became the first English Bible printed on
English soil. It was published "with the Kings most gracious license."
Indeedan answer to Tyndales prayerKing Henry VIIIs eyes were partly
open.

Coverdales translation was fair at best. Though
Coverdale was an excellent Latin and German scholar, he knew little if any
Greek and Hebrew. His New Testament translation was principally Tyndales
work, and the Old Testament utilized some of Tyndales work combined with
translations from German and Latin texts. Yet the English world is forever
indebted to Miles Coverdale for his brilliance in poetic structure. Much
of the beautiful prose throughout the book of Psalms in the Geneva and
King James Bibles originated with Coverdale.

Also in 1537 John Rogers, another close friend of
Tyndale, was given license by Henry VIII to print another English Bible.
An excellent scholar himself, Rogers pioneered the process of adding
marginal notes and commentary in English. He did little new translation
work, but rather was a skillful editor. He used Tyndales 1534 New
Testament as well as his Old Testament translation through 2 Chronicles
with few changes. For the remainder of the Old Testament and the
Apocrypha, Rogers used Coverdales work with some alteration. Not wanting
to take credit for Tyndales work, Rogers published the Bible under a
penname, "Thomas Matthew," possibly because it was the upside-down-
reverse of Tyndales initials. In fact, he even printed a large "WT" at
the end of the Old Testament in the first edition Matthews Bible of 1537
to give credit to the man whose genius gave us most of our Bible and the
basis of our language.

On the accession of the staunchly Catholic Mary I in
1553, England was again under the authority of the Roman Church.
Immediately, Rogers was imprisoned, leaving no support for his wife and
ten children. Standing at the stake to be burned, he was again admonished
to recant. Rogers responded, "That which I have preached I will seal with
my blood." His wife was there with their now eleven childrenone Rogers
had never seen before. Witnesses claim he washed his hands in the fire
until they were consumed.

Rogers was the first of almost three hundred martyrs
under Queen Mary I, also called "Bloody Mary." Many more were imprisoned,
tortured, or otherwise punished. It was Rogers death that caused many
reformers to flee England for Geneva setting the stage for the Geneva
Bible.

Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIIIs vicegerent for
ecclesiastical affairs, and Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant
Archbishop of Canterbury, wanted an English pulpit Bible in each of the
8,500 parish churches in England. The resulting massive volume would
become known as the Great Bible.

Miles Coverdale was enlisted to lead an English team to
revise the Matthews Bible and exclude the marginal notes. Coverdales
team started work in Paris in early 1538. In December 1538, the
Inquisition confiscated 2,500 finished copies for burning under the
accusation of heresy. The English team fled to London where 3,000 copies
were printed by November 1539, and the 2,500 confiscated copies also
appeared in England in late 1539. Details are unclear, but it appears that
Cromwell may have used the English possession of a French-captured German
merchant ship to pry the Bibles from the French. Another 3,000 copies were
printed in London by May 1540completing the 8,500 needed for the parish
churches. In less than four years after Tyndales prayer before his death,
an English Bible lay in each parish church in England. In fact, Henry VIII
actually authorized the Great Bible. The King James Bible is often
erroneously called the "Authorized Version," but it was never authorized.
Only the Great Bible was ever authorized by the English Crown.

Cromwells efforts to disseminate English Scripture
were not ignored. Most English bishops were still allied with Rome and
were opposed to Cromwells intentions. Henry VIII, upset over a marriage
that Cromwell arranged for him, withdrew his protection. A few weeks after
the Great Bibles were delivered to individual parish churches, Cromwell
was arrested on false charges of heresy and treason and executed without
trial in July 1540.

The second and subsequent editions of the Great Bible
are often called Cranmers Bible because Archbishop Thomas Cranmer
contributed a prologue. Throughout the reigns of Henry VIII and his young
son, Edward VI, Cranmer witnessed more than forty editions of the Bible
appear in English. Yet on the accession of Mary I in 1553, Cranmer was
immediately arrested. Initially charged with treason, he was eventually
convicted of the heresies of Protestantism, and like Rogers and others
before him, he was burned alive in 1556.

Born Out of Blood

Mary I, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of
Aragon, took the throne in England in 1553 and set the stage for the
creation of the Geneva Bible. Sixteen years earlier her father, Henry
VIII, had released the first Bible in English following his separation
from the Catholic Church at Rome. However, once Mary was in power, she
immediately began forcing all of England back under the authority of the
Roman Church and suppressing the circulation of the Bible in the common
(English) tongue. Specifically, Mary I issued proclamations in August 1553
forbidding public reading of the Bible and in June 1555 prohibiting the
works of reformers Tyndale, Rogers, Coverdale, Cranmer, and others. In
1558 a proclamation was issued requiring the delivery of the reformers
writings under penalty of death. A vicious persecution was instituted
against anyone who supported the reformers views or attempted to
circulate the scripture in English. Overall, nearly three hundred people
were burned at the stake under Marys reign, and many more were
imprisoned, tortured, or otherwise punished. Reformer John Rogers, who
produced the Matthews Bible, was the first to be burned. Others who
followed the same fate included Bishop Thomas Cranmer, who was involved
with the second and subsequent editions of the Great Bible, Nicolas
Ridley, Hugh Latimer, and John Hooper, who was often referred to as the
"Father of Puritanism."

It is estimated that during Bloody Marys reign as many
as eight hundred reformers fled England to seek shelter on the Continent.
Some settled in Strasburg, some in Zurich, and some in Frankfort. Many
settled in Geneva, the "Holy City of the Alps," where Protestantism was
supreme. The city was under the control of the famed scholar, John Calvin,
with the assistance of Theodore Beza. By 1556 a sizeable English-speaking
congregation had formed in Geneva with Scottish reformer John Knox serving
as pastor. William Whittingham, a tremendous scholar who according to
tradition married a sister of Calvins wife, succeeded Knox as pastor in
1557.

No new English Bible translations had emerged since the
first Great Bible of 1539, and William Whittingham undertook the work of
improving the English versions of the New Testament. First published in
Geneva by Conrad Badius in 1557, Whittingham produced a revision of
William Tyndales New Testament "with most profitable annotations of all
hard places." This small, thick octavo edition included an epistle by
Calvin himself, which helped to introduce Protestant views to the English
people. In this epistle Calvin declared, "Christ is the End of the Law."

Whittingham included a preface entitled, "To the Reader
Mercy and peace through Christ our Savior." It reads:

In the Church of Christ there are three kinds of
men: some are malicious despisers of the Word and graces of God, who
turn all things into poison, and a further hardening of their hearts:
others do not openly resist and contemn [condemn] the Gospel, because
they are struck as it were in a trance with the majesty thereof, yet
either they quarrel and cavil, or else deride and mock at whatsoever
is done for the advancement of the same. The third sort are simple
lambs which partly are already in the fold of Christ, and so willingly
hear their Shepherds voice, and partly wandering astray by ignorance
tarry the time till the Shepherd find them and bring them unto His
flock. To this kind of people in this translation I chiefly had
respect, as moved unto zeal, counseled by the godly, and drawn by
occasion, both of the place where God hath appointed us to dwell, and
also to the store of heavenly learning and judgment which so abounded
in this city of Geneva, that justly it may be called the patron and
mirror of true religion and godliness.

The Translation

Immediately after the release of Whittinghams 1557 New
Testament, the English exiles entered upon a revision of the whole Bible.
Assisted by Beza and possibly Calvin himself, several English exiles were
involved in the translating, but it is impossible to say how many. Miles
Coverdale, who produced the Coverdale and Great Bibles, resided in Geneva
for a time and may have assisted, and a similar claim may be advanced in
favor of John Knox. The famed sixteenth-century English historian, John
Foxe, was also in refuge in Switzerland during this time. Yet the chief
credit belongs to William Whittingham, who was probably assisted by Thomas
Sampson, Anthony Gilby, and possibly William Cole, William Kethe, John
Baron, John Pullain, and John Bodley.

The Old Testament from Genesis through 2 Chronicles and
the New Testament were merely revisions of Tyndales previous monumental
efforts. The works of Coverdale, Rogers, and Cranmer were also consulted,
and the English exiles completed a careful collation of Hebrew and Greek
originals. They compared Latin versions, especially Bezas, and the
standard French and German versions as well.

While Coverdales, Matthews, and the Great Bible were
merely revisions of Tyndales translations from the original Hebrew and
Greek, the Geneva Bible charted new ground. The scholarly English refugees
in Geneva completed the translation of the remainder of the Old Testament
directly from Hebrew into English for the first time. Tyndale had only
translated the Hebrew (Masoretic) text up to 2 Chronicles before he was
imprisoned in 1535, and it was not until this handful of scholars
assembled in refuge in Geneva that there was sufficient familiarity with
Hebrew among reformers to complete the translation of the Old Testament
directly from Hebrew. Thus, the English scholars who escaped persecution
in their native land and resided in Geneva produced the first English
Bible ever completely translated from the original languages.

The work took over two years, and in 1560 the world
witnessed a new English Bible, which is now known as the "Geneva Bible."
In a simple prefatory note, the Geneva Bible was dedicated to "Bloody
Marys" successor, Queen Elizabeth I, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne
Bolyen.

Other Names

The 1560 Geneva Bible was popularly called the
"Breeches Bible" because the Geneva translators chose the term "breeches"
for the coverings referenced in Genesis 3:7: "Then the eyes of them both
were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig tree
leaves together, and made them selves breeches." Tyndale and Coverdale had
previously used "apurns," and the King James translators later followed
Tyndale and Coverdale and used "aprons." This name, "Breeches Bible," was
born out of the peculiarity of the term "breeches" and the implausibility
that their coverings were in fact "breeches." The 1562 Geneva Bible was
called the "Place-makers Bible" because of an erroneous rendering of
Matthew 5:9: "Blessed are the place-makers." Later, the Geneva Bible also
became known as the "Pilgrims Bible" because the Pilgrims brought Geneva
Bibles when they sailed to the New World in 1620.

The First English Bible in America

Technically, the Geneva Bible was not the first Bible
in America, and possibly not even the first English Bible in America.
Certainly the Huguenots brought French Bibles and possibly German Bibles
to Beaufort, South Carolina, when they fled to the New World to escape
persecution in 1562 and again in 1564. In 1565 Spain initiated a colony at
St. Augustine, Florida, and the Roman Catholic priests would have had
Latin Bibles. However, the French and Latin Bibles had little if any
impact on what would become the United States of America. German Bibles
became quite common in the British colonies, but their influence was
greatly overshadowed by the impact of the English Bible in colonial
America.

The first English church service held on American soil
was probably conducted by a chaplain to Sir Francis Drake when he put
ashore briefly in California in 1579, and the Bible used was more likely a
Great Bible or Bishops Bible (first edition 1568) than a Geneva Bible.
Yet it is unknown.

Sir Walter Raleighs ill-fated Roanoke Island colony
beginning in 1584 certainly had a Bible. Captain John Smiths book, The
General Historie of Virginia, published in 1624, states that Roanoke
colonist Thomas Hariot, a devout Christian, had a Bible among his
possessions. Because of the absence of any Puritan influence, it is
assumed that Hariots as well as other Bibles in the colony were Bishops
Bibles. But the Roanoke colony disappeared mysteriously, and whether they
used a Bishops Bible or Geneva Bible is unknown.

Despite the uncertainty of the Geneva Bible being the
first English Bible brought to American soil, it is certain the Geneva
Bible became the spiritual foundation for the future United States of
America. Though earlier temporary colonies may have used other Bibles, the
Geneva Bible was most likely the Bible of Jamestown, and clearly the Bible
of the Pilgrims and the Puritans.

It is likely that the Geneva Bible first came to
Jamestown with Captain John Smith and company in 1607, since the first
ministers of Virginia were Puritans. In 1609 William Strachey, secretary
of the Virginia Company, arrived in Jamestown, and quoted from the Geneva
Bible in writing his history of Virginia. Rev. Alexander Whitaker, who
came to the colony in 1611, used a Geneva Bible as documented in one of
his surviving sermon texts. It is very likely that John Rolfe, a young
widower, used a Geneva Bible to teach Matoaka, better known as Pocahontas,
about Christianity. She became a Christian, and soon afterwards, on April
5, 1614, they were married.

Also called the "Pilgrims Bible," the Geneva Bible
influenced many of the Pilgrims. In his book The Genesis of the New England Churches,
Leonard Bacon says that the Pilgrims Pastor, John Robinson, used the
Geneva Bible in Leyden. It therefore implies that it was the Geneva Bible
that his congregation carried to the New World. Further, Massachusetts
Governor John Bradfords history quotes the Geneva Bible. In fact, the
Pilgrim Society Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts has Geneva Bibles that
belonged to Governor Bradford as well as other Pilgrim Fathers.

P. Marion Simms, author of The Bible in America, says of the
Geneva Bible, "Being a Puritan Bible, the Geneva would be used throughout
the early colonies wherever English-speaking Puritans were found. New
England used it extensively and the Plymouth colony used it exclusively."
Even the famous Puritan preacher John Cotton used a copy of the Geneva
Bible. The Geneva Bible helped form the Christian culture in the
English-speaking colonies of the New World that would later become
America.

The First Modern Verse Divisions

Before chapters could be divided into verses, the Bible
had to be divided into chapters. Early Bibles and gospel books used
various divisions in the text for referencing, but there was no
standardization until the beginning of the thirteenth century. Modern
chapter divisions, which first appeared in the compact, single-volume
Parisian Bibles of the thirteenth century, are attributed to Steven
Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury and author of the Magna Carta.

In the fifteenth century Rabbi Mordecai Nathan divided
the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) into separate verses, and his
verse divisions of 1448 became the standard verse divisions used
throughout the world today. The Reformation began partly born out of
Italian Humanism, an interest in the original biblical languages of Hebrew
and Greek, which led Reformation Bibles, whether English, German, or other
languages, to be translated directly from Hebrew and Greek, not Latin. As
translators began rendering the Hebrew Bible directly into their own
language, eventually Nathans verse divisions were assimilated into
Langtons chapter divisions in the Christian Old Testament. The first
English Bible to incorporate Nathans verse divisions for the Old
Testament was the 1560 Geneva Bible.

The New Testament verse divisions used today were
developed by Parisian printer, Robert Estienne (Stephanus in
Latin), though he may have been aided by previous work. Estienne, living
in the staunchly Catholic Paris, began to express some of the reformers
views of theology, which put him at odds with some professors at the
University of Paris. He was forced to flee Paris in 1551.

Tradition states that Estienne carried a copy of his
third edition Greek New Testament of 1550 and divided the New Testament
into verses for the first time while escaping from Paris to Lyon. Estienne
eventually settled in Geneva, and in 1551 Estienne released his fourth
edition Greek New Testament with the first modern verse divisions. The
1557 Geneva New Testament was the first English scripture with modern
verse divisions. The 1560 Geneva Bible was the first complete English
Bible and the first Bible circulated widely to have verse divisions (a
1553 French Bible was the first Bible to incorporate the Nathan-Estienne
verse divisions). It is often hard for the twenty-first-century mindset to
perceive that the Geneva Bible was the first English Bible where John 3:16
was actually John chapter 3, verse 16.

Conclusion

In this edition we have chosen not to include any
commentary and simply allow the strength of the translation to come
through to the reader. Yet because of the near 450 years elapsed since the
original Geneva Bible was printed, we have identified antiquated words
that are no longer commonly used or have been so altered in meaning as to
be unfamiliar today, and we have placed definitions for these words in
brackets within the text as well as in a glossary in an appendix. These
"bracketed" definitions provide fluid comprehension and expanded
vocabulary for the modern reader while preserving the original 1560 Geneva
text.

Please click here for the Most Important Message of the Bible Concerning You."
Is any of the following a blessing to you today?"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Matthew 24:3
"Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." Acts 4:12"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."1 Corinthians 2:9